Privacy policy

Last updated 2026-05-23

Minesweeper is operated by TLM Software Design, Inc., a Michigan corporation with offices at 27280 Haggerty Road, Ste C-6, Farmington Hills, MI 48331, USA ("we", "us", "our"). This policy describes what the app collects, why, where it goes, and the choices you have.

Summary

The game itself is fully offline. We don't run a server that your gameplay touches.
Your player name, selected difficulty, and per-difficulty top-5 leaderboard live only on your device and are lost on uninstall.
No account, no sign-in, no profile lookup. We never see your name or your scores.
The only network traffic the app generates is to Google AdMob (to fetch ads) and Google Firebase (to report crashes and basic install events).
On iOS the app does not request App Tracking Transparency and does not read the IDFA. Ad personalization is otherwise governed by Google AdMob, applicable regional consent (GDPR / CCPA), and your device-level ad settings.

What the app stores on your device

The following keys are written into platform key-value storage (SharedPreferences on Android, UserDefaults / Keychain on iOS). None of it is transmitted to our servers, the ad network, or any third party.

Player name — the free-form string you type on first launch. Defaults to "Player" if you skip the prompt. You can change it later via the Edit link on the Welcome screen.
Selected difficulty — Easy / Medium / Hard. Defaults to Easy on a fresh install and changes only when you pick another option in Settings.
Top-5 leaderboard per difficulty — rank, the player name that was set when the score was recorded, elapsed time in mm:ss, and the timestamp of the run. Sorted by fastest; the sixth slowest entry is dropped automatically when a faster one comes in.
Loss counter — an integer that drives the every-third-loss interstitial cadence. Never leaves the device. Wiped on uninstall.

There is no account, no cloud sync, no backup target. Wiping the data is one app-uninstall away.

Network behavior

Gameplay is fully offline. The board, reveal logic, mine placement, win/lose detection, timer, and leaderboard all run locally. Only two external services receive traffic:

Google AdMob — when the app needs to fetch an ad creative (banner refresh every 60 s; interstitial after every third lost game).
Google Firebase — Crashlytics uploads on crash, Analytics on app-launch and lifecycle events.

If the device is offline, the game runs normally. Banner and interstitial slots remain reserved but blank. Crash reports queue locally and upload on the next connectivity window.

Android permissions

The app declares exactly two permissions in its Android manifest, both required for the ad network and crash reporter:

android.permission.INTERNET
android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE

No camera, microphone, location, contacts, storage, calendar, or biometric permissions are requested.

Ad network — Google AdMob

Minesweeper is free and ad-supported. Google AdMob serves:

A banner ad pinned to a reserved 90 dp slot at the bottom of every screen.
An interstitial ad after every third lost game. Losses 1 and 2 after install are silent.

On iOS the app does not request App Tracking Transparency and does not read the IDFA, so iOS ads are served without that identifier. The app does not set ad-personalization flags itself — whether ads are personalized is governed by your Google AdMob settings, applicable regional consent (GDPR / CCPA), and your device-level ad preferences. AdMob's data practices are governed by Google's privacy policy at policies.google.com/privacy and the AdMob & AdSense privacy and terms page at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

Crash reporting and analytics — Google Firebase

Firebase Crashlytics captures stack traces, device model, OS version, app version, and a Firebase installation ID when the app crashes. Firebase Analytics records a small set of install and lifecycle events. Neither service receives gameplay data, board state, your player name, or leaderboard contents.

Firebase data is governed by Google's privacy policy. Default retention is up to 14 months for Analytics; Crashlytics reports can be purged on demand from the Firebase console.

Children

Minesweeper is intended for adults. It is not listed as a children's app, is not directed at children under 13 (or under 16 in the EU / UK), and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child has interacted with the app and we have collected anything we shouldn't have, contact privacy@swtlm.com and we will delete it.

Your rights and choices

Because we hold no account data or PII on our servers, most data-subject rights — access, portability, deletion — are satisfied by uninstalling the app. Ad-personalization preferences can be managed through your device's settings (Settings › Privacy › Ads on Android; iOS Tracking is never requested). For AdMob or Firebase data held by Google, see Google's privacy controls.

To exercise any rights or raise a privacy concern, email privacy@swtlm.com and we will respond within 30 days.

This website

This landing page uses Google Analytics (GA4) to measure aggregate visitor behaviour — pages visited, session count, and referral source. Analytics cookies (_ga, _ga_*) are only set after you accept via the cookie banner on first visit. No marketing cookies, ad-targeting cookies, or tracking pixels are set beyond Google Analytics. You can withdraw consent at any time by clearing your browser's local storage for this site.

Service providers

Google AdMob — in-app advertising (banner + interstitial).
Google Firebase — Crashlytics + Analytics.
Google Analytics (GA4) — aggregate visitor analytics for this marketing site (consent-gated).
Amazon Web Services (S3 + CloudFront) — hosts this marketing page; receives standard CDN access logs that are not joined to any in-app identifier.

Changes to this policy

We will post material changes here and update the "Last updated" date above.

Contact

Privacy questions: privacy@swtlm.com

TLM Software Design, Inc.
27280 Haggerty Road, Ste C-6
Farmington Hills, MI 48331
USA

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